January 18th
Seaview, California
You’re probably wondering why I haven’t written in a few weeks, but once I tell you about the girl I met, I think you’ll understand. I think you’ll be happy for me too. I met her in an airport of all places, which feels fitting in a lot of ways, and I think you’d agree. We spent almost an entire week together, traveling across the country in a laughably tiny economy car. She was trying to get home to see her sister who was having a baby any minute, and I was trying to get to Joey’s wedding. Anyway, this girl likes to talk. She may even be chattier than you were. And she likes to ask questions. She’s curious – like you always were. And she got me to open up in a way that I haven’t been able to since . . . well, since you know when. Anyway, it turns out this girl is into traveling and adventure, and there’s this genuine quality about her that I’ve yet to find in anyone else since you. I don’t want to compare the two of you. That wouldn’t be fair. And you’re both night and day from each other in every other aspect. But I think you should know that I’m falling for this girl.
It’s time for me to move on.
I didn’t think I could love anyone else after you.
But now I have hope.
And her name is Daphne.
While I’ll cherish the time we had together and the love we once shared, it’s time I let you go.
And it’s time I let myself live.
Yours,
Cristiano
I don’t know exactly what this means, but I now know the girl he was writing to . . . it wasn’t Joey.
Flipping the journal to the next page, I’m desperate to read more. But there’s nothing but blank, unwritten pages. With a pounding heart and a racing mind, I grab a cold drink of water from the fountain beside me, take a deep breath, and compose myself before heading into my classroom.
Ambling back to my apartment after my last class of the day, I stop at the corner and press the ‘walk’ button. Traffic is robust at this hour, most people just having left work for the day, and it looks like I’ll be waiting a while for a green light.
Sticking my hand into my pocket, my fingertips graze the cool glass of my phone’s screen, and there’s a tightness in my chest and an electric swirl in my middle that accompanies the thought of calling Cristiano.
I don’t know if he’s still in town or how he got the journal into my mailbox today, but I can’t imagine he’d come all this way just to leave again.
Pulling my phone out, I thumb through my contacts until I find his name. I press the green button and lift the phone to my ear, my heart running wild and my mouth dry.
“Daphne,” he answers on the third ring, his voice a low vibrato against my eardrum.
“The journal in my mailbox . . .” I say. “. . . we need to talk. You still in town?”
“I am. Here until tomorrow.”
“Come over. I’ll text you the address.”
I pace my apartment, re-reading his journal entry over and over, trying to figure out what it means despite the fact that I’ll soon have my answers.
A swift knock on my door nearly sends my heart into a dizzying freefall, and I lunge for the door, pulling it open with a clean jerk. I want to get this over with. I can’t stand another minute of not knowing who he was writing to or why he left that journal in my mailbox.
Cristiano stands on the other side, a pale gray t-shirt wrapping his muscled torso and his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.
“Come in,” I say, stepping away and then closing the door behind him. He stands in the middle of my apartment, eyeing the closed journal resting in the middle of my coffee table. Arms folded, I keep a careful distance. “You want to explain what that was doing in my mailbox today?”
He smirks, like this is some kind of funny to him, and his dark eyes hold on mine.
“Daphne,” he says my name in one slow exhale, and then he looks down for a second. “My travel journal, it’s not what you think. And what you read? I wasn’t writing to Joey. I never was.”
Taking a step back, I lift a brow, my arms crossed as I impatiently await his explanation.
“Three years ago, my girlfriend passed away in an accident,” he says. “I never got to say goodbye. I was in Oregon, with Joey, and when we found out Amanda had died, we were rushing to get back home for the funeral. That’s when our accident happened, and, clearly, I never had the chance to say goodbye.”
My arms unlock, falling limp at my sides, my hardened exterior melting in real time.
“After the accident, and after losing Amanda, I guess I wasn’t handling things well. I wasn’t eating or sleeping. I was drinking too much. I was behaving recklessly.” He shakes his head, eyes squinting as if he’s recalling a dark time. “One of my friends convinced me to go to talk to someone. A professional. He suggested I keep a journal and write letters to her. I thought it was a stupid idea, but it was supposed to make me feel connected to her, I guess. It was a way to get closure. And he said I’d know when the time was right to ‘say goodbye,’ and I could do it pen to paper.”
I want to move toward him, but I stand, frozen, glued to his every word, my heart in my throat.
“So I traveled, and I wrote letters to her. When I came home, I’d stop by her grave, leave a filled notebook and move on, starting another one. I must’ve filled at least half a dozen over the years,” he chuffs, glancing away.
“Cristiano . . .” My jaw falls. I don’t know what to say, but I’m sure it lies between an apology for his loss and some sort of words of comfort that could never be enough.
“I don’t blame you, Daphne, for assuming it was Joey.” He rakes his hand along his five o’clock shadow. “I thought about it some more, and I’d have come up with the same conclusion. You didn’t know.” He takes a deep breath. “But now you do.”
“I’m so sorry.” My hand splays across my heart, my body humming with a kaleidoscope of emotion.
Without thinking, I go to him. I throw my arms over his shoulders, and I bury myself against his chest. He doesn’t move at first, and then his hands rest on my hips. The warmth of his breath skims the top of my head, and I shut my eyes, listening to the steady thrum of his heart.
“I was wrong about you,” I say, my words breathless against his chest.
His hands slide up my sides, pulling me tight against him. I glance up, meeting his soulful gaze, my lips parted slightly. I want him to kiss me. I want a sign that all is not lost despite the rollercoaster ride we’ve been stuck on these past few weeks.
“Daphne,” he says, brushing a strand of hair from my eyes. “I’m crazy about you. Since the moment you came into my life, you’ve flipped it completely upside down. You’re the part that I never knew was missing, and chasing after you? It’s been nothing short of an epic adventure.”
My lips curl in the corners, and I rise on my toes, pressing my lips into his, melting into him when his soft lips take command of mine.
“I’m crazy about you too,” I say. It feels good to own my feelings. To blurt them out loud. To give them life and not try to deny their presence. “More than you could ever know.”
He hoists me up, wrapping my legs around his waist, his face buried in my neck, leaving a trail of fiery kisses along my collarbone. My arms rest on his shoulders, my head tossed back, and he carries me to the kitchen, depositing me on the counter and situating himself between my spread thighs.
“I can’t believe I’m about to say this . . .” his voice trails softly as his mouth curls upward with a nervous smirk. “But I’m falling in love with you, Daphne.” He takes a moment. “I . . . I love you.”
My heart swells in my chest, and I press my mouth against his. The words linger, caught in my throat, bursting with a threat to spill out the second we come up for air. My whole life, I’ve been the girl who falls fast and hard and gets burned in the process. I didn’t want to be her anymore, but being here, next to him, looking into his warm brown gaze, I feel it.
I couldn�
�t deny it if I tried.
Cupping my hands around his shoulders, I pull myself away and whisper, “I love you too.”
Running my fingers through his hair, there’s a pulsing warmth between my thighs that quivers in anticipation, my heart rapid-firing as his fingers work the button of my jeans.
“I love you. But right now I need you, Daphne,” he breathes, impatiently tugging on my zipper. His lips press against my collarbone, and I feel him softly inhale against my flesh. “I have to have you.”
43
Daphne
“You know, if you were any other guy, I’d be extremely creeped out by what you pulled off yesterday. Today too.” I nuzzle my cheek against his bare chest as we lay in my bed that night, tangled in sheets. We started in the kitchen, made a detour to the living room, and finished in my bed. “I still don’t know how you pulled those off.”
He grins, his fingertips grazing the backside of my arms.
“Who did you bribe?” I ask, half teasing. He doesn’t answer. “Oh, my god. You bribed someone. Was it Betty?”
Shrugging, he settles into the pile of pillows behind him, tucking his free hand behind his head and staring at the ceiling. He’s glowing. I am too. I feel it. There’s a slick heat between my thighs, and my sex still pulses with tiny aftershocks of pleasure.
“Regardless, that was a bold, bold move, Amato,” I say. “But promise me something, will you?”
“Sure.”
“Since I work here, please don’t bribe any more administrative professionals. Given your track record, I’d say you have a knack for it, but I kind of want to keep my job, so . . .”
“You got it.”
Cristiano rolls to his side, scooping me in his arms and pulling my body against his. I love his warmth and the way my body molds perfectly to his.
“You sure this is what you want?” I ask, wincing, knowing he’s going to be annoyed with my question. Clearly, given his grand gestures and all, this is what he wants. I am what he wants. But I don’t think he’s examining the big picture here. “I only ask because I’m planting roots here, and you’re a free bird, and I don’t want to be the one to clip your wings.”
“Ridiculous metaphors aside, I told you, we’ll make this work.”
“Okay, but how? I can’t exactly pack my bags on a Wednesday and fly to Belize on a whim as much as I would absolutely love to.”
“You get spring break, right? And summer vacation. Fall break. Thanksgiving. Christmas. President’s Day? Labor Day?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Okay, then. We’ll do our local getaways on the weekends. We’ll travel nationally during extended breaks, and we’ll do our big travels in the summer.” He kisses the top of my head. “So, I’ll have to stick to a schedule for once in my life. Big deal.”
Burying my smile into the curve of his neck, I breathe him in and slip my hand beneath his arm.
I love this man.
But I don’t want to rush this. I want to savor it. I want to make it last. And if that means taking my time, then so be it. But something tells me he won’t be going anywhere for a while. He’ll be right here beside me patiently waiting for the day I’m ready to hand over my heart in it’s stitched-and-taped-together entirety.
“Promise me something, Daphne,” he whispers into my ear. The glow of the California sunset outside my windows has faded, and darkness falls around us.
“Sure.”
“From here on out, when life gets really fucking hard – when this relationship gets hard, because those kinds of things are inevitable - we run to each other,” he says. “Can you promise me that?”
Exhaling, I nod. “Yes.”
“You know, for the first time in years, I’ve found myself thinking about the future,” he says, his voice holding a wistful quality. “I hadn’t thought about it for a long time. It was too painful. Almost as painful as thinking about the past. You think you have your life planned, you think you know who you’re going to spend it with, and when that doesn’t happen, it takes the joy out of wondering what’s next.”
“True.”
“But you changed that for me,” he says. “I can’t predict the future. Hell, I can’t control the future. But I hope you’re in mine. I want you to be in mine.”
Turning to face him, I smirk. “Remember that fortune teller in Colorado?”
He glances to the side before lifting a brow. “Yeah? What about her?”
“She said I’d already met my soulmate,” I tease him because I know he doesn’t believe in that stuff. “I’m sure she tells everyone that. I meant to tell you that you were probably right. There was nothing she said to me that gave me any kind of definitive proof that she was the real deal. She knew I was the baby of the family, but that could’ve been a lucky guess. Wait. She knew I was an artist too. I don’t know . . . maybe . . .”
Cristiano’s quiet for a second, and then he pushes a hard breath past his lips.
“What’d she say to you, anyway? You ran off that night, and I never asked because you were in a mood,” I say, studying his face.
He rolls to his back, running his hand through his hair and looking straight up at the ceiling.
“She said my father apologized for not being the man we needed him to be. That he was proud of us. All of us. And that he watches us,” he says.
Chills run the length of my spine, and my arms are covered in gooseflesh. “Wow. That’s . . . that’s pretty powerful. I mean, how would she know just by looking at you that your father had passed on?”
He’s silent.
“So maybe she was the real deal?” I shrug.
“Maybe,” he says. “But it doesn’t really matter in the end. We’re not supposed to know what comes next, at least I don’t think we are. That’s the whole point. Life’s one big adventure. Nothing’s promised. Nothing’s guaranteed. There’s an up for every down. And if we’re lucky enough, the good stuff will outweigh the bad. And if we’re even luckier, we get to know what real love feels like.”
Cristiano rolls over on top of me, pinning me against the mattress. His hand tenderly lifts to my jaw, guiding my mouth toward his.
“I don’t want to know what happens tomorrow or the next day or the day after that,” he whispers, his lips grazing mine. “I just want to know you’re going to be there.”
Epilogue
Daphne
Ten Years Later
“We’re here!” I call out as we step into the foyer of my parents’ home in Rixton Falls. Cristiano dusts snow off his shoulders, and I shake it from his hair.
It’s New Year’s Eve: the tenth anniversary of the day we met and our seventh wedding anniversary. It’s been eight years since he proposed outside a four-hundred-year-old castle in Tipperary. It’s been six years since we embarked on a belated honeymoon to Bangkok. Five years since we had our first near-catastrophic fight in Sydney. Four years since we rode camels in Egypt, toured the pyramids after hours, and almost got caught. Three years since we were held up in customs in Moscow and lived to tell the tale. Two years since we stumbled upon a little orphanage in Costa Rica that opened our hearts - and minds - to the kind of adventure neither one of us ever imagined was on the horizon . . .
“Aunt Daphne! Aunt Daphne!” Our five-year-old nephew, Nolan, tromps down the hallway, arms open wide, and he jumps into my arms, wrapping his legs around my waist.
“Hey, buddy,” Cristiano grins at Nolan. “How’s it going? I heard Santa stopped by your house last week. You must’ve been a good boy this year, yeah?”
“I was so good, Uncle Cris! I was better than Noah!” he says. I stifle a laugh because I know it’s true. Noah’s been quite the handful lately from what we hear. “I was so good, Santa brought me Optimus Prime and a little brother!”
“Mamá?” A sweet little voice beckons me with a tug on the back of my jacket. It’s the strangest thing having someone call me that, and while we’re still in the getting-to-know-you phase, I’ve never been more sure
of anything in my life. I don’t know her favorite foods yet. Or cartoons. Or Disney princesses. I don’t know her favorite color (mostly because it changes every time I ask her). I don’t know how long it’s going to take for her to adjust to this strange new world we’ve brought her to. I don’t know any of that. But I do know one thing.
I am her mother. From now until the end of time.
“Yes, sweetheart?” I place my hand on her shoulder and gently guide her around. Her wide, deep-set brown eyes take in the sweeping foyer of my parents’ house before settling on her new cousin.
“Who is this?” Nolan points.
“This is Lidia,” I say, brushing soft, chocolate-brown hair from her forehead. “She’s your new cousin. She’s five. Like you. And she’s really looking forward to getting to know you.”
Lidia brushes against me, stuck like glue. She’s been this way since we stepped off the plane from Costa Rica last week, but I don’t blame her. I can’t imagine this is easy for her, and at times, I imagine it’s been terrifying, but Cristiano and I have devoted every waking moment to ensuring she’s comfortable and happy and has everything she could possibly need to make this a smooth transition for her.
“Lee-dee-ah,” Nolan says her name slowly, correctly. I’m impressed. He slides down my side standing close to his cousin. Probably too close. But he wears an expression of sincere fascination, and something tells me they’re going to be fast friends.
Lidia nods, chewing her lower lip and tucking her chin against her chest. She’s a little shy, and we knew that from the instant we met her at the orphanage in San Vicente. We first visited two summers ago, passing by the Ciudad de la Esperanza orphanage and stopping inside as we followed a trail of children’s laughter. We spent the rest of our trip volunteering there, mostly building maintenance and doing chores like cleaning and laundry. Every once in a while, they’d let us interact with the children, but they needed to get to know us better, and they needed references and background checks to clear, understandable. A few months after that, we returned. And every chance we got over the months that followed, we went back.
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